The Brockwell Bake started as an annual real baking competition and meet in Brockwell Park, Lambeth, South London in 2008. In 2009/10 we expanded our activities aimed at promoting knowledge and choice in baking in our local area to include growing heritage wheats on allotments, school and community gardens and with farmers close to London. We stone mill and bake with our wheat through out the year and at events such as the Lambeth Urban Green Fair and the Feast on the Bridge, The Mayor's Thames Festival. We also do real baking workshops with local schools.

Brockwell Bake baking on WoWo - July 2014
starting July 2014 together with collaboration with good folks of WoWo Farm we are going to be baking next to the mill for the summer holidays. Provisionally this is called the "Singing Bread" project.

Brockwell Bake @ Nordic heritage cereals seminar
Andrew Forbes was invited to attend the fourth "Nordic heritage cereals seminar" held from 14th to 17th July on the island of Ă…land, south from the mainland Finland. It was good to give a short talk on the history of heritage wheat in British wheat and the export of early cultivars from Scotland and England to the Nordic countries.Overall it was incredibly encouraging to hear about the progress made in re-introducing heritage cereals into cultivation in Nordic countries, roughly 7 years ahead of our own programme.Especially interesting talks on mineral content of heritage cereals, evolutionary breeding with populations and blind tastings of different wheats.

Brockwell Bake at SouthBanquet 2013
Brockwell Bake brought pizza making for kids and workshops on threshing, milling and baking to the SouthBanquet event in front of the Royal Festival Hall, August 31st and September 1st 2013. Video of Vincent Talleu teaching pizza making here.

Baking with Georgian wheat and a Georgian baker
Jean-Jaques Jacob came from Georgia with the very special Doli wheat flour of Georgia to bake with us for the Georgian "Supra" banquet at the first RAW festival of organic and bio-dynamic wine. Doli is an amazing and unique aromatic wheat with flavours like cinnamon, plum, roasted green almonds. The whole occasion was very interesting and exciting, especially to make friends with Jean-Jaques. We hope not too long before we can meet again, here or in Georgia and that if his harvest this year is good we can maybe import some Doli grain to mill and bake with here.

Wheat Harvest - 10/8/10
Pics by RAA plotholder Elkin Atwell as we try late night to finish harvest on plot 35 and 36 before the start of a wet August 2010.

Spring Wheat, South London, 2010
Sowings around South London on school, community gardens and allotments during March 2010 including 16 heritage wheats (early cultivars and may be a few landraces) from the John Innes Centre’s BBSRC Small Grain Cereal Collections.

Trip to John Innes Centre 28/7/10
Trip to inspect heritage wheat trials in the John Innes Centre’s fields near Norwich as guest of Mike Ambrose, curator of the BBSRC Small Grain Cereal Collections

Tivissa, Oct. 2009, oven firing and wheat planting
After a long wait, since the oven was uncovered and dome rebuilt in 1998, finally manage to get a new oven door together and make pizza and bake decent bread in Gary and Adrian’s oven 9th October 2009. Plus dig over the huerta behind the lower caseta and a patch of the meanie (fennel) field and do a first sowing of the Letts Winter mix of traditional UK wheat.

oven and mill, Pyrenees, France
a few pics showing baker/mill set up in Pyrnees. We believe the mill/bakery supplied bread to about five local villages so quite big by local standards. Oven was of the ’gueulard’ design.

The new very old Artofex mixer
Now that I had an oven that could bake more than one loaf at a time I found I needed a bigger mixer than my so called "Heavy Duty" Kitchenaide. Remembering the Artofex "triple action twin reciprocal plunging arms" mixer (originally a French make) Richard had shown me at Baker and Spice I started a search for one. Luckily I came up with an expired ebay auction, where no bids had been made, whose seller turned out to be just 8 miles away in Mitcham - I know of other people who are scouring across all continents to find the same machine . Here you can see other bakers describe this as the Stradivarius of dough mixers, its certainly the mixer that most closely mimics hand kneading to make a beautiful silky, "artisanal" style dough. My machine was originally supplied to the "Laboratory of the Government Chemist" in 1974 and appears to be in perfect working order - due to the amazing quality of its materials and engineering. Just its quiet deep hum when running makes the Kitchenaide sound like a tin and plastic toy in comparison.

Since the 2009/10 season we sowed wheat in the Lambeth and Southwark area including samples of early cultivar and UK landraces of spring wheat from the BBSRC - Small Grain Cereal Collections at the following locations.